Coastal squeeze threatens dune biodiversity - Scripts & Data

Abstract

Infrastructure development and sea level rise squeeze coastal dune ecosystems into an increasingly narrow coastal strip, resulting in biodiversity losses. Yet, it remains unknown how much space is required to support the diverse suite of habitat and species assemblages found in natural dune ecosystems. Here, we investigate plant and habitat diversity in 614 plots along 47 sea-to-land transects in the southeastern USA and the Netherlands. We find that both plant and habitat diversity non-linearly depend on coastal width, with cumulative plant diversity reaching ~75% of its potential at 800 and 1800 m width in the USA and the Netherlands, respectively. Alarmingly, dunes are narrower than these widths along 79% of USA and 66% of Dutch coastlines. Further analyses, however, highlight that management interventions can mitigate biodiversity losses along narrow coastlines. Our work thus stresses the importance to conserve and strategically manage coastal dunes to protect their functions and services.

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Methods

The analyses rely on the following freely available datasets:

•  Lansu et al. (2024) " A global analysis of how human infrastructure squeezes sandy coasts” Nature Communications 15.1 (2024): 432. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44659-0
• OpenStreetMap - shoreline: https://osmdata.openstreetmap.de/data/land-polygons.html
• Protected areas: https://www.protectedplanet.net/en/thematic-areas/wdpa?tab=WDPA